Though Singapore has no shortage of placing fashionable buildings, it’s the island’s rows of conventional shophouses that are its most distinctive architectural feature. Most of the shophouses and terrace homes, a great mixture in Transitional, Late, Art Deco and Modern styles, are located around Koon Seng Highway, Joo Chiat Road, Joo Chiat Place, Tembeling Highway and Everitt Road. Behind the bottom-flooring shop or reception corridor there is likely to be a small courtyard, open to the sky, then one more room; this layout can be seen on the Baba Home and the Katong Antiques House.

Sometimes a single floor home would be lifted to turn out to be the second ground of an expanded dwelling. Historically shophouses were constructed with structural (i.e. load bearing) timber beams which carried the burden of the roof and floors. In 1981, Emerald Hill Highway’s growing older prewar shophouses and terrace houses, built initially of the twentieth century, appeared certain to face the fate of demolition.

There is a reason why the store homes were built with actually slender width. In the late eighties, consideration was turned to the shophouses at Tanjong Pagar. The extra elaborate and expensive shop homes showed how influential or prosperous …